Words & WritingGreek → English
Lexicography
/ˌlɛksɪˈkɒɡrəfi/noun
The craft of compiling dictionaries.
The Greek roots
λέξις
léxis
word, way of speaking
γράφειν
gráphein
to write
Literally: “word writing”
The story of the word
λεξικὸν βιβλίον was a book of words, and the adjective alone came to stand for the whole thing, which is why a lexicon needs no noun after it. Johnson defined the lexicographer in his own dictionary of 1755 as "a harmless drudge", then spent nine years demonstrating the drudge half. The trade is far older than its English name: Alexandrian scholars were already glossing Homer's difficult vocabulary in the third century BC.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
lexicondyslexialexicalbiographygraphite
In a sentence
Modern lexicography starts from a corpus rather than from the editor's ear.
She moved from teaching into lexicography and has not read a novel for pleasure since.